


Lay Your Head Where My Heart Used To Be

by ialpiriel



Series: Shadows Get Long [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Caesar's Legion, Character Death, F/F, Slavery, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4872751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ialpiriel/pseuds/ialpiriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>F!Courier frees a slave, someone out of her past. They have sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Your Head Where My Heart Used To Be

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for some gore in later parts, unrelated to the sex.
> 
> Originally posted on the [Fallout Kinkmeme](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/5459.html?thread=10741075).

“How much is that one?” Lucinda nods at the slave huddled down against the wall, out of the wind.

“One aureus,” the slave master says. He’s got his eye on her coin purse.

“That’s a rip-off,” Lucinda replies. “She’s worth _maybe_ ten denarii.”

“Twenty.”

“FIfteen.”

“Fine.” The slave master grunts and holds out his hand. She drops the fifteen denarii into his palm, harrumphs. He doesn’t like her, she doesn't like him, the playing field is even. She has privileges because New Vegas knows her, likes her, wants her. Once this is over, she’ll go back to her pointless husband in Dog Town, back to the slaughterhouse floor where they put her to work before this almost-frumentarius deal. Back to a quiet, provincial life where she can’t cause trouble.

“Hey, you!” the slave master turns on the huddled slaves, points at the woman huddled against the wall. “Get over here.”

The woman jumps to her feet and comes quickly, head down, eyes on her feet.

“This one here--” shit, he can’t even call her Lucinda, what a piece of-- “--is your new master. Whatever she tells you to do, you do. We clear?”

“Yes sir,” the slave agrees. She’s got dark skin, but light hair, like maybe she bleaches it the same way Owl-Eagle used to bleach hers, with pie-plant roots. No idea how she would get pie-plant, out here, or how she would find the time to do it. There’s a tattooed bird on her shoulder, small, but with the familiar broad beak and feathered ruff of a raven.

“Good.” The slave master turns back to Lucinda. “She’s all yours,” and then the asshole leers at her like she doesn’t functionally outrank him. Maybe she can convince Vulpes to turn his life into living hell. Convince Vulpes she likes this piece of shit, that Vulpes could get to her through him. That’d be a hoot.

“Take my bag,” Lucinda says, shrugs off her backpack and hands it to the slave. The slave takes it without protest, her eyes still down. “Follow me. I have business back on the other side of the Colorado.”

“Yes ma’am,” the slave says, and follows Lucinda as she breezes her way out of the Fort, past the veterans and the traders and the children running up and down the staircase. Down the river to the cove on Lucullus’ raft. Up the road, around Searchlight, stop at a ranch house, boxes full of dirt and plants out in front. There’s a windmill up on the hill, a bridge between hilltops. Lucinda pokes the door open with her boot, machete drawn but not ready for a fight.

There’s nothing inside; the lock held and the radroaches don’t care about a dried-out, single-room shack.

Lucinda kicks her boots off, once she’s through the door.

“Leave the backpack in the corner,” she says, points to the floor beneath the table, opposite the lockers. “There’s an extra set of clothes in the lockers, if the pants don’t fit, there are a few skirts you can try too.” She squats, drags a footlocker out from under the bed. “I’m going to go make food on a campfire outside, come out when you’re ready.”

“You’re…” the slave trails off, looks between Lucinda and the footlocker and the backpack. They hadn’t talked, the whole way to this shack, no sign that the slave was a real person.

“Feeding you. Legion doesn’t feed slaves more than absolutely necessary.” Lucinda straightens up, dusts off her knees. She’s holding a can of Pork’n’beans in one hand, dried, salted gecko steak in the other. “Birds do better,” she says nodding at the woman’s bird tattoo, tugging aside her scarf to show off her burn scar and the mostly-obscured raven tattooed across her chest. It’s the same tattoo, different scale, different covering. “So get dressed in some real clothes, and I’ll make you dinner, and then we’ll talk.”

“Little Raven?” the slave says, voice soft.

“Been a long time since anyone called me _that_.” Lucinda grins. “You’d have been your branch’s Little Raven, too, huh? Us and seven wrinkly old ladies.”

The slave laughs, grins back.

“Guess we can’t both be Little Raven now, huh?”

“You can call me Lucinda. Or Lucy. Legion calls me one, NCR calls me the other.” She shrugs. “Doesn’t much matter. Get changed, come outside, we’ll eat and talk.”

The slave nods, reaches for her rope belt while Lucinda breezes past her, out the front door and toward the campfire she has built down by the boxes. 

***

They decide her name is Raven--”none of the others left, now,” Lucinda murmurs, tells how her Old Raven was killed by Legionaries to teach a lesson none of them needed to learn, how the others were killed or enslaved--and they talk until the desert chill settles across their backs.

The shack is much warmer, out of the wind, but Lucinda unfolds a blanket across the bed anyway. They sit on it, legs crossed, facing each other over a half dozen open boxes of snack cakes and four bottles of beer.

“So…” Raven looks at the front door, blanket pulled up over her shoulders, powdered sugar from the cakes smeared across her lips and chin. She’s fiddling with the beer bottle in one hand, the plastic wrapper of a cake in the other. “Where do I go?”

“You can come with me. I have a Legion babysitter, since they don’t trust a woman to do a man’s job.” Lucinda kicks one leg out, so her heel sits next to Raven’s hip. “He’s back in Novac, though, in a hotel room I got. Got an NCR sharpshooter to kill someone, town rallied and I got a room for free. Sharpshooter’s wife got sold to the Legion, he wanted revenge.” She snorts, rubs at her nose with the back of her hand, wipes the powdered sugar off her fingers onto her pants. “Lied to him about who did it. One less problem, later.”

“So you support the Legion,” Raven asks.

“Survive smarter, not better,” Lucinda replies. She can’t look Raven in the eye as she says it, stares at the knobs on the oven next to the bed instead. “He’s an asshole anyway. The sharpshooter. Not worth the trouble I went to.” She snorts again. “Good for killing deathclaws, though.”

“Huh,” Raven replies, studying the wall next to Lucinda. “You said I can come with you, but you said it like I have more options than that.”

“If you want. If you leave, I won’t hunt you down.” Lucinda looks at Raven, then, studies her lips and her eyebrows and her hair. “I’m loyal to the Legion, but I’m loyal to the tribe first. What's left of it.” She _huh_ s, soft. “All three of us.” She looks away, back at the oven.

“I appreciate it.” Raven follows Lucinda’s eyes to the oven. “Can I stay here, for a few days? Get my bearings, maybe.”

“Novac would be better than here. More people. Easier to get the feel of the Mojave there. A doctor, a Legion sympathiser, a gift shop where you can buy supplies to live on. My hotel room, if you want somewhere to stay.” Lucinda fiddles with the neck of her beer bottle, raises the bottle to her lips before remembering it’s empty and grabbing for her second. “It’s just up the road. We’ll get there early tomorrow morning, if we set out at dawn. Well before noon.”

“It sounds nice,” Raven murmurs. She drops her empty bottle into the crate between the bed and the oven. Lucinda tosses her own empty bottle after it. “I think I’d like that.”

“Sleep here for tonight, though. It’s a good midway point.”

“It is,” Raven agrees. “Homey. Comfortable.”

“Better than sleeping on the ground, right? Better than a tent too.”

“Better than using your backpack as a pillow while the fucking Owls screeched at each other, that’s for sure.” Raven mimes the Owls, waving her hands around her head, crossing her eyes, pulling a face.

Lucinda laughs and it devolves into a snort. She claps her hand over her mouth, but now Raven is laughing too, snorting and choking, and Lucinda can’t stop herself.

The snack cake wrappers end up shoved into the same crate as the empty beer bottles, and the two women stretch out on their backs on the bare mattress, blanket tugged up to their necks as the giggle and weave their fingers together. 

***

Lucinda sleeps with her back to the wall, Raven with her back to Lucinda and her face toward the door. The bare bulb dangling from the ceiling is just enough light to leave shadows in the corners of the room. Lucinda had shoved the table in front of the door to keep it shut, when the rattle of the nightstalkers had picked up over the rattle of the crickets.

They end up turned around early in the night, Lucinda with her face to the wall and Raven curled behind her, arms folded in front of her chest and pressed to Lucinda’s back. Lucinda scoots back into the touch, makes a sleepy, muttery noise at Raven, who rearranges her arms until they’re chest-to-back, Lucinda’s hair getting into her mouth and breathing on the back of Lucinda’s neck.

Near midnight, a thump on the door has Lucinda rolling over Raven--who blearily grabs at the blanket and Lucinda equally--and fumbling for her brush gun, set against the oven and ready if anything happens. She holds it at rest as she levers herself up onto the table on one knee, so she can squint through one of the cracks at the illuminated pool of light in front of the door.

There’s a nightstalker there, pawing at its nose.

She replaces the brush gun against the oven.

“Nightstalker,” she murmurs, sliding back under the blanket, behind Raven this time. Raven scoots over and rolls onto her other side, so she and Lucinda lay face to face, eyes crossing because of the distance. “Won’t get in.”

“I’m glad,” Raven murmurs. She feels around for Lucinda’s hand, and Lucinda offers it. “Would noise scare it off?” she asks, tugging Lucinda’s hand up so that their folded hands rest between the two women’s chests.

“Might,” Lucinda agrees, and leans forward until they’re breathing the same air.

It’s Raven who closes the distance between them, presses her lips to Lucinda’s. Lucinda’s the one who pulls her over, though, rolls onto her back so Raven can brace her arm over Lucinda’s shoulder. Raven again who gets her knee between Lucinda’s thighs, but Lucinda who runs her fingernails up Raven’s back, yanks her shirt up until she can get her hands on Raven’s breasts.

“Don’t wanna do this clothed,” Lucinda hisses as Raven peppers kisses across her cheekbones and eyelids. “Not fun the day after.”

Raven laughs, but sits back, unstraddles Lucinda’s thigh so Lucinda can remove her pants. She strips her own shirt and pants, but leaves the blanket draped over her shoulders. Lucinda tugs at it, rolls her eyes when Raven won’t let go of it and scowls down at her.

Lucinda’s raven tattoo is mostly hidden under the burn scar, only peeking through in a few places, but the snake curled around her belly--between her hips and her navel, a rattlesnake eating its own tail--is dark and proud still. Raven runs her fingers across it, laughs when Lucinda squirms under her touch.

“Someone ticklish?” she teases.

“Fuck off,” Lucinda growls, grabs at the blanket on either side of Raven’s neck and hauls her back down into a kiss. Raven laughs, braces one arm above Lucinda’s shoulder and curls the other around Lucinda’s hip, kneels between Lucinda’s legs. Lucinda hooks a leg around Raven’s thigh, rolls her hips up into hers. Raven grunts, throws one leg over Lucinda’s--so that she straddle’s Lucinda’s thigh while Lucinda’s other leg hold her in place--and rolls her hips down into Lucinda’s. “Weren’t you talking about noise?” Lucinda asks. “I was,” Raven agrees, moves her hand from Lucinda’s hip to the inside of her thigh, pulls her own leg up so Lucinda’s is at a steeper angle--“better access,” she says, grins and waggles her eyebrows; Lucinda rolls her eyes again. “How do you like it?” Raven asks, taps Lucinda’s belly with her fingers before wiggling them.

“Haven’t done this much,” Lucinda replies. “Husband’s not fond of fingers when he's got a dick.”

Raven laughs, moves her fingers off Lucinda’s belly.

“Which one’s yours?” she asks, fingers slow and careful on either side of Lucinda’s pussy.

“You wouldn’t know him,” Lucinda gasps, curls her hands into Raven’s biceps, buries her nose against Raven’s neck. She smells like the Legion, like Hydra and Bitter Drink and wet dogs and human sweat. “Dog Town, Frumentarius. Hoping the packs of strays have gotten him, by the time I get back.”

“What a great wife you are,” Raven tells her, carefully parts Lucinda’s lips to rub slowly until she’s slick.

“Shit, he spent all day talking to his dogs and spoiling them, I’m allowed to be bitter.”

“You are,” Raven agrees, rearranges her fingers so one is against Lucinda’s clit, which makes Lucinda squirm.

“Less there,” she gasps. 

“Right,” Raven agrees, goes back to what she was doing, with slow, heavy strokes. 

Raven snorts. “Legion likes to think they’re above that.” She pauses. “So, wife, huh?”

“Yeah.” She fumbles with Raven’s nipples--girls like that, right? Shit, she hasn’t done this before, fuck, Raven can probably tell--because if she tries to go for Raven’s cunt she’ll just get in the way.

“Big step up from slave.”

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees. “Young enough they thought they could unlearn me.”

“Lucky,” Raven murmurs, presses her lips to Lucinda’s cheek just in front of her ear.

“I was,” Lucinda agrees, grinds into Raven’s hand as best she can. “If you want, you can--” she lets it hang there, not sure what she’s asking.

“Okay,” Raven agrees, rearranges her hand back so her thumb is on Lucinda’s clit. “Good?”

“Yeah,” Lucinda agrees. “I was lucky. Only one who made it out intact, I think. Only one of my band. Others died or were killed.” She whines and twists as Raven slips a single finger inside, digs her fingernails into Raven’s biceps. It’s going to leave marks, but she can’t get herself to care, not with the way Raven is moving her hand and breathing in her ear, soft words she barely recognizes anymore because it’s been so long since anyone used them to speak to her. They’re filthy words, and she finds herself murmuring them back, not even thinking about it, a call-and-response they’re building here and now. Raven laughs when she uses the wrong word, but hell, it’s been, what, thirteen years since she’s spoken this? She’s allowed a mistake.

She comes hard against Raven’s hand, wheezes instead of gasping or sighing. Raven fiddles with the end of one of her braids, one finger still inside and one still next to Lucinda’s head.

“I’ll return the favor,” Lucinda murmurs after she comes down and Raven wipes her fingers on her bare thigh. “Roll over.”

“If you insist,” Raven teases, and pulls Lucinda after her when she rolls. The blanket ends up bunched beneath them, the faint breeze through the cracks raising goosebumps on both of their arms. Lucinda kneels between Raven’s legs, runs her hand down Raven’s chest: collarbones to breasts to diaphragm, diaphragm to navel to the dark hair over her pussy.

Shit, this is different from touching yourself, isn’t it? You have to pay attention to what the other person responds to, have to do what they like.

“What do you want?” she asks, tries to keep her voice steady. Raven has to know she’s new at this, so it’s not like she’s digging herself a deeper hole.

“Do what I did for you,” Raven says, stretches her arms over her head and arches her back until her spine pops and she groans. She hooks her ankles behind Lucinda’s knees and urges her forward. “Fingers on the outside, and then a finger or two in between, and then use two fingers inside.”

Lucinda leans forward so she can brace her hand against the mattress.

She carefully moves her other hand between Raven’s legs, starts a slow up and down.

“That’s it,” Raven encourages her, curls her hand around Lucinda’s wrist to pull her hand tighter. “Keep going. Like that.” Raven grinds into her hand.

They’re just picking up their rhythm when there’s another thump on the door--louder, meatier, less hissing and more gargly breathing. Both women jump, and Lucinda dives for her gun while Raven fumbles the blanket up over herself.

“Deathclaw,” Lucinda says, without even looking through the door, tugs her pants up to her knees as she unchambers rounds from her rifle--eight of them, slammed on the top of the stove with one hand as she rests the rifle on her hip and balances it in the crook of her elbow, and yanks her pants up to her thighs with the other hand. “Stay there, or grab a gun out of the lockers if you think you can handle one.” She reloads bullets into the magazine--grabbed from a different box, five of them, look handmade, _click click click click click_ , one after the other.

“No,” Raven’s voice hikes up an octave. “I’m--” The door buckles as the deathclaw throws itself at it again. 

“Stay there, then,” Lucinda growls, sets the action. She raises the rifle as best she can, one-handed, and drags the table away from the door with the other. The door is latched, so it holds as the deathclaw throws itself at it again--though it buckles dangerously. The growl recedes, and Lucinda throws the door open, raises her rifle, three shots-- _boom_ , lever down, case ejected, lever up; _boom_ , lever down, case ejected, lever up; _boom_ , lever down, case ejected, lever up; pause--waits for the gargly sigh from the dark to stop.

She steps out of the doorway, squints at the ground in the circle of light from the over-door lamp. The deathclaw is laying half-in and half-out of the light, most of its face intact but for two bullet holes, one through its brow, above its left eye, the other starting in its mouth and exiting the back of its skull. The third bullet ripped through its throat, and it’s bleeding out from their mostly. There’s a nightstalker corpse just to the left of the door, its belly ripped open by the deathclaw.

“Should be safe,” she calls back over her shoulder as she reaches down to check the deathclaw is actually dead. It should be, with the head trauma, but hell she got shot twice in the head and lived. Her fingers slip across bloody skin, but there’s no response. It’s dead, then. 

Good. 

She stands.

“Thank you,” Raven calls, voice shaky.

“I’m sorry about…” she trails off, half-turns to look at the corpse. “About this. usually they don’t wander down here, but. Once in a while.” She steps back through the door, swings it shut and latches it before she wedges the table in front of it again. There’s blood on her hand and speckled across her chest.

“I understand,” Raven says, eyes Lucinda’s bloody hand and rifle. “I’ll wash up, but that.” Lucinda pauses, wrinkles her nose as she looks at Raven, bundled in the blanket. “That might have ruined the mood.”

“Yeah,” Raven agrees. Her fists are tight in the blanket. She’s watching the door, as Lucinda dumps a bottle of water over her hand, trying to wash most of the blood off before she grabs a washcloth.

“I’ll watch the door, if you’re nervous,” Lucinda offers. 

“Thank you,” Raven says, her voice softening to a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, don’t worry. I should be apologizing to you. You’re the one who didn’t get off.” Lucinda snorts, wiggles her pants down over her thighs. They’re short enough, which is a godsend, but they’re made for someone with an inch less thigh than what she has to work with. She tosses them back on top of her shirt and underwear, sits on the edge of the bed and fiddles with a loose stitch on the corner of the blanket. “We could try again tomorrow, once the sun is up and things have settled down a bit.”

“No, you’ve done enough for me,” Raven tells her. “We don’t need to try again.”

“Alright.” Lucinda swings her legs up onto the bed, so her heels dig into the mattress next to Raven’s butt. “So, we head into Novac tomorrow morning?”

“It’s a plan,” Raven agrees.

Raven bundles up even more, falls asleep easily with Lucinda sitting on the edge of the bed, her bare feet flat on the dusty, splintery floor.

Sometime in the night Lucinda gives up watching the door, slides under the blanket next to Raven. Raven drapes an arm over her, and Lucinda pulls her close, lets Raven rest her head against her chest. They readjust until things are reasonably comfortable--sleeping skin to skin is never particularly comfy, no matter what you do--and both drift off to sleep. 

***

Lucinda gives her a backpack full of supplies--forty rounds of 10mm ammunition, a 10mm pistol, a burlap-wrapped ten pounds of jerky from the box on the shelf, three gallons of clean water, two changes of clothes, a compass--and they set off down the road, toward the junction north to Novac.

They’re five minutes down the road when Lucinda stops, curses at a rock in her boot.

“Go on ahead,” she waves to Raven. “I’ll be a half minute behind is all.” She stands on one leg, her foot tucked up off the ground, as she tries to untie her boot without kneeling.

“Alright!” Raven agrees, smiling as Lucinda curses at her bootlaces. She turns, starts to walk, and starts to hum--and old song one of the Sparrows in her band had taught them for walking.

Lucinda sets her foot on the ground; squares her hips; squares her shoulders; raises her gun from her hip, where it hangs on its strap; looks down the sights.

_Boom_ ; lever down; case ejected; lever up.

She falls on her front, so the gallon of clean water stays uncrushed. Blood pools around her head, as Lucinda takes the backpack, slings it onto her shoulder, rolls Raven over.

Bullet exit wounds are never pretty.

Takes the knife at her hip to the tattoo on Raven’s shoulder, cuts out a neat square of skin, wipes her now-bloody hands on Ravens’ shirt. Throws the square of tattooed skin away, off the side of the road.

Not a Bird anymore.

Not either of them, not really, not if she’s being honest with herself.

But fewer people to disagree on that, now.


End file.
